Sunday, April 13, 2008
Intelligent Design Caused the Holocaust!
John Lynch has discovered that anti-evolutionism is no bar to anti-Semitism.
He quotes Maciej Giertych, a professor of dendrology, right-wing member of the (Catholic) League of Polish Families, member of the European Parliament, candidate for the presidency of Poland, signatory of the DI's "Dissent from Darwinism" statement, contributor to Answers in Genesis' Creation magazine and interviewee in Expelled, expressing some very nasty sentiments about Jews.
In that article in Creation, Giertych equates evolution with "macroevolution," that requires the creation of new "genetic information." He asserts that artificial selection does not produce new information:
Breeders eliminate unwanted genes making domesticated forms genetically poorer. These are usually helpless in nature and perish when left without human help. If not, this is due to quick inter-breeding with wild forms that replenish the gene pool.Add to that the fact that Dr. Michael Egnor, the Discovery Institute's in-house brain removal surgeon, insists that "Darwinism" should be defined as the proposition that:
Most of the successes in breeding come from guided recombination. The breeder pools certain rare genes into one individual or population to achieve the desired combination of traits. Nothing new is produced.
All natural biological complexity arose by the mechanism of non-teleological heritable variation (random mutations) and non-teleological differential reproductive success (natural selection).According to Egnor, artificial selection (i.e. breeding) is "intelligent design":
The essence of Darwinism — from Darwin's orgininal (sic) theory to the modern synthesis and all of its variants — is that biological evolution is non-teleological.
Artificial selection is selection caused by intelligent agency. An example of artificial selection would be the intentional breeding of bacteria by a scientist in a research lab. ...The "logic" that Expelled offers, as expressed by Ben Stein, is that the Holocaust was a "consequence" of "Darwinism" because the Nazis interpreted Darwin's theory to "mean survival of the fittest" and then set about "using industrial technology to eliminate people they deemed to be just specks of mud." But, quibbles aside about how intelligent he was, Hitler was clearly an intelligent agent pursuing a teleological program to improve the "Aryan race" by eliminating the Jewish people (certainly not by pooling "Jewish genes" with "Aryan genes"). Hitler was definitely not relying on natural selection.
[I]f natural selection is substantially the same as artificial selection, then biological change in nature (natural selection) is in some ways the same as biological change caused by intelligent agency (artificial selection). That's an assertion that some of the evidence in evolutionary biology is consistent with intelligent design. ...
It was Darwin's denial of teleology in biology that made his theory revolutionary and controversial. ...
If artificial teleological selection isn't "Darwinism" and anti-Semitism, as Giertych demonstrates, is not a result of an acceptance of evolutionary theory, then it wasn't Darwin's theory that caused the Holocaust, it was Intelligent Design!
Intelligent Design is evil!
This very obvious hypocricy could make a very effective anti-creationist meme.
IDers are wont to classify anything involving even the most [mild and irrelevant] teleology as "intelligent design", but somehow find it appropriate to pin an entirely premeditated attempt to breed a master race as "Darwinism".
Truth is not a priority with these people, results are ... as measured by giving the faithful a reason, no matter how tenuous, to continue to believe, despite the fact that the "old time religion" keeps running against the tide of the modern world.
If you can't beat 'em, subvert 'em ...
No, I've always treated Biblical literalism, fundamentalism, creationism, etc., as failures in the face of modern science (though I'll defend the right of anyone to believe any damn foolery they want, up to the point it impinges on someone else's rights).